Authors: D. J. Butler
“Back!” he hissed to the Irishman.
O’Shaughnessy’s eyes were stupid with drink, but something
propelled him against the wall, back first, and he filled both his hands with
silenced pistols.
Burton raised his pistol.
The lift stopped—
bang!
Bang!
Bang!
—
and Burton started firing.
The Colt 1851 Navy punched three holes through the glass and
shining wood in a tight pattern that should have placed all three bullets into
the neck of the man hiding there.
He collapsed forward into the middle of the lift, but Burton paid him no
attention.
He was already shifting
his aim to the second man, who spun into view holding a Sharps carbine and
raising it to his shoulder.
Bang!
The Sharps fired first, and Burton felt the bullet bite into
his hip.
He staggered back, losing
his grip on the Colt as he pulled the trigger.
Bang!
Burton’s shot missed and the bullet tore away up the tunnel
uselessly.
The pistol clattered to
the floor.
Burton fought to regain
his footing and bring the rapier up into a guard position, pointless as that
would be against a rifle, but his wounds were too much and he flailed backwards
until he collided with the wall.
The man with the Sharps stalked forward out of the
lift.
He was clean-shaven, with a
cleft chin and the determined look of a professional in his eye.
He kept the muzzle of the Sharps
pointed squarely at the center of Burton’s chest.
“Drop the sword,” Sharps growled.
Zing!
Zing!
Zing!
Zing!
Zing!
Zing!
Tamerlane O’Shaughnessy’s first shot hit the Pinkerton in
the side of the head, but he kept firing.
Every bullet hit, and the gunman crumpled to the floor under a tsunami
of instant, nearly silent death.
“I reckon
you’d
have
got him with one shot,” O’Shaughnessy said with a lopsided grin.
“I promise I’ll try harder next time.”
Burton stooped to recover the Colt, hopping on one leg like
a crane and wincing with pain.
“I’ve reconsidered my view,” he said, trying to speak gently, but
knowing that it came out surly.
“Shoot as many bullets as you want.”
“I’d give you a shot of my whisky,” the Irishman offered,
“only I drank it all.”
Pain seared Burton’s hip and thigh, but he forced himself to
walk with as much dignity as he could muster into the lift.
“Think nothing of it,” he brushed away
the offer, knowing he wouldn’t be quite so cavalier if there were actually a
bottle to hand.
“I’ve had worse.”
“I can see that you have,” O’Shaughnessy agreed, nodding
pointedly at the scars on Burton’s face.
“Only I doubt you had to walk out of that jungle on your face
afterwards, did you?”
Burton checked his hip in the lift.
It bled, but not profusely, and the
bullet had entered, missed the bone, and exited again.
He’d live.
They dragged the bodies out into the hall and then wiped
blood off their shoes on the dead men’s clothing.
“Try not to step in the blood,” he urged O’Shaughnessy.
“Do you reckon me that big an idjit, then?
I’ll not be painting a bright red trail
behind us wherever we go.
Mother
O’Shaughnessy might have raised a numbskull or two, but she didn’t name them
Tamerlane.”
Both men climbed gingerly into the lift together.
Burton shut the brass accordion door
and heard a click outside as the external lever popped back to its
NO CALL
setting.
Inside, a brass panel set into the wooden wall contained another lever
running past five markers:
GATE
,
TUNNEL
,
BAY
,
LAKE
, and
TOWER
.
The lever was currently
set at
TUNNEL
.
“It can’t have been just bad luck that these two men
stumbled upon us,” Burton ruminated, examining the panel.
“No, I reckon they’re expecting trouble,” the Irishman
agreed.
“Maybe they’ve seen what
happened at the mine entrance, or they called down and got no answer.
Then you called the lift with that
switch outside, and they jumped on to see what they’d find.”
Burton nodded.
“I suggest we go to the Bay, one level up from where we are now.”
“Bit of a gamble, isn’t that?” the Irishman asked.
“Anything we do is a gamble,” Burton agreed.
“I’m gambling that there aren’t other
Pinkertons waiting for us at the Bay level, either because there aren’t others
waiting anywhere, full stop, or because they’re waiting at a higher position.”
“I’ll wager on the same horse,” O’Shaughnessy deferred to
him.
“If we actually had a horse,
mind you, I’d gladly force the beast up the tunnel with me on its back, because
I don’t mind admitting I’m a wee bit nervous.
But I can’t do any more of these stairs.”
“No more stairs,” Burton agreed, and began reloading the
1851 Navy.
When they had both reloaded, he shoved the lever to
BAY
.
Hishhhhhhhhhh!
The lift slid smoothly upward, and the lever in the panel
climbed to show their progress.
*
*
*
Jed Coltrane’s hands were free.
He’d cut his own bonds before he’d handed the one knife the
Danites had missed in searching him to the Englishman, and he’d kept his eyes
shut and his head down since then.
Now he opened his eyelids a crack and examined the room.
Danites in long coats stood at every window, peeping out
past the animal skin curtains that covered them, and one more waited behind the
door.
Jed counted six of them,
including the leader with the jug handle ears, Lee, who paced up and down the
center of the floor rubbing his hands together like he was warming up to
pray.
A single kerosene lantern
burned, shedding its oily stink and its wavering yellow light from the hook by
which it hung from the center beam of the ceiling.
Jed lay piled in the corner by the chimney with the farmer
and the rest of his family.
They
all had their hands tied and a few of them had bruised faces or bloody lips,
but they wore patient, serious expressions on their faces.
Maybe they were sure help was
coming.
Or maybe they were just
ready to die.
Jed wasn’t ready to die, not by a long shot.
He wasn’t sure what it was he thought
he had to live for, exactly, but whatever it was life brought him, he hadn’t
had enough of it yet.
He looked
for a way out, and it wasn’t hard to find.
The Danite at the nearest window watched the yard outside
and not the prisoners, obviously relying on the fact that they were tied up and
had been beaten.
Either of the
ends of the cabin’s long plank table or the rough wooden bench running along
the wall would give Jed plenty of platform from which to launch himself into
the air and through the window.
The Danite would never see it coming, and then Jed would be out in the
night and running for freedom.
He was an acrobat, after all.
Hell, maybe he ought to escape, to warn Brigham Young and
Sam Clemens and the other.
Jed had
no reason to be confident that the young Englishman had somehow pulled it
off.
For all he knew, John Moses
might be merrily on his way into the trap at that very moment.
But if he jumped out the window, he’d be leaving prisoners
behind.
They had no one else to
help them… that wasn’t right.
Dammit, Coltrane, what’s happened to you?
He clenched his jaw to keep from gnashing his teeth and giving
away the fact that he was awake.
Don’t go soft now, Jed Coltrane, he browbeat himself.
Those are real guns those men are
carrying, and they’ll happily blow you full of holes to make a point, much less
to snatch the keys to this Kingdom they want so badly.
They’re willing to burn down the whole
damn show, they won’t bat an eye at having to snuff out a rousty like you.
You can come back for the farmer and his family, or tell
Brigham Young and he can send his people back.
It’s his problem, anyway, not yours.
Just because you went all soft on a
little kid once doesn’t mean you have to go soft on everybody.
Count to three, then go.
One.
The
Danites kept their watch strictly.
The man at the nearest window was fixed on the back pasture, and
wouldn’t even see Jed until he was flying past.
Two.
“Ain’t
they a bit late getting back?” a big-shouldered, red-haired Danite asked his
chieftain.
“Patience, Brother Robison,” John Lee answered.
“We’ll give them a few more minutes.”
Three.
Jed stayed put.
Dammit! he cursed himself.
“Hoo-whee!” the man standing beside the doorway called out,
and opened the door wide, letting in a rush of cold night air.
Every Danite in the room turned into
the breeze, pulling his pistol or readying his rifle to shoot.
Jed had another clear shot at the window, and still he did
nothing.
He looked at the farmer Heber Kimball.
As if the old man were echoing Jed’s
own thoughts, he shook his head sadly.
Brigham Young came into the room first, hands raised in
surrender.
The Mexican Ambassador
followed, and Orrin Porter Rockwell, and then Sam Clemens and finally the
Englishman Fearnley-Standish, all holding their hands up and bowing their heads
in meek submission.
“Shit.”
The
curse escaped Jed in a whisper, but it escaped him.
No one seemed to notice except the farmer Kimball, who
turned and shot Jed a curious look.
Jed winked back at him and dropped his eyelids back to slits.
“You’ve got us, John,” Young said gruffly.
“You’ve surprised me here like you
surprised me in the Beehive House.
Now let me surprise you.”
“With what?” Lee asked.
“A burst of pointless temper, followed by an even more
pointless offer of forgiveness?
Save your breath, whatever it’s worth to you.
Jesus may be able to forgive me, Brigham.
All you can do is promise not to bring
me to trial.
And even if I
believed you, your promise is meaningless now, because as of tomorrow morning,
you won’t be President of the Kingdom anymore.”
Absalom Fearnley-Standish edged over to the knot of
prisoners beside the fireplace and sat down.
The Danites paid him no mind.
“What if you fail?” Young asked.
Lee laughed, harsh.
“If I do, you won’t be there to see it.
You’ll never see another sunrise, Brigham.
I’m going to take you outside now,
purely out of courtesy to Sister Kimball, and kill you in the goat pen.
Of course, I don’t know how long Sister
Kimball will appreciate my courtesy, that’s entirely up to Heber.
Once you’re dead, he’ll have to choose
to be with me or against me, like the Savior said.
Naturally, there will be consequences, whichever choice he
makes.”
“We have to move,” Fearnley-Standish hissed in a soft
whisper.
Jed barely heard the
words, they were so soft, and Heber Kimball shook his head to clear it from the
distraction of the Englishman’s voice.
“You’re not the Savior.”
Brigham Young’s voice was gentle.
“Neither are you.”
John D. Lee’s voice was hard and flat.
It was the sort of voice you’d use to accuse another rousty
of gaffing a card game.
“We can’t… be by… the chimney.”
The Englishman was still whispering out of the corner of his
mouth, shooting out his words in staccato bursts like the bullets out of John
Browning’s
machine-gun
.
The Danites, transfixed by the
confrontation in the center of the room, didn’t hear him, and Jed and the
Kimballs ignored him.
His eyes
began to twitch frantically.
Brigham Young turned and paced deliberately across the room
in Jed’s direction, the cabin floor creaking under his steps.
He looked like Daniel in the lions’
den, Jed thought, except the only man in the room who carried himself like a
lion was Brigham Young.
He was a
lion in a jackals’ den, maybe.
Young stopped himself in front of the fireplace, then
stopped and turned to face Lee.
“Shoot me here,” he told his adopted son.
“Aren’t you troubled you’d make a mess of Sister Kimball’s
floors?” Lee asked, but he drew a pistol from the holster at his hip.
“But why do I ask?
Consideration of others has never been
your strong suit.”